Chibigo
by SMILEH123
Summary: 'I've known him since the beginning of his story of hollows, since before his mother died. Now that he has powers, I've discovered mine. I can fight them too! It's my turn to protect you, Ichigo'Ichigo/oc, IchigoXoc. Action/Adventure/Romance/Humor Story
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! Welcome to my new story! I've had this stuck in my head for a while,  
>so... yeah. Enjoy!<strong>

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Bleach... sadly.**

**By the way, there's also a contest going on. It's the same contest as the ones in every other fic I did. If you review, you get a cookie. Only people that have an account can get them, but the person who has the most review cookies gets a oneshot with the pairing of their choice, as long as it isn't rated 'M'. Flames and 'OMG! That's awesome!' type reviews do not count. Neither does a review telling me to hurry up for the next chapter. As long as you have at least one helpful comment, it counts. I like to improve my work, so if I get good advice, or an idea, you will be added to the cookie chart. If there's a tie in between a few reviewers, they will pick a number in between one and ten and whoever gets the number closest to the one I was thinking of, then they can either; choose someone else to be in the story, or submit their character or whtever pairing they want me to write about and any additional ideas, like the way they want the ending to go, or if they want someone to act a certain way. NO MARY – SUES! NO OOC – NESS! **

**Now that I've wasted enough time, you may read freely... if you want to.**

_'Dreamscape'_

'Outside Dreamscape'**  
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_**Chapter One: Past Nightmare**_

_"Chibigo!" I shouted, bounding towards him, only to jump onto his back._

_I heard a small laugh come from behind me. "Mrs. Kurosaki! I can't wait for_  
><em>tomorrow! I love your cooking!...What's today's date again?" I asked<em>  
><em>excitedly, scratching my tilted head. I half-heartedly attempted to blow a few strands of hair as they fell into my face, ignoring them when most did not budge.<em>

_"June seventeenth, why?" She answered quizzically._

_"No reason. Just curious."_

Crying, I tried to run from the nightmare, only to have the scene shift.

_I turned away sadly, slightly bowing my head, allowing the long side bangs framing my face to shield my tears from view. My parents had forgotten about me. Again._

_"What's wrong, Roozu? Why aren't your parents here?" A nine-year-old Ichigo. I heard the concern in his voice but pivoted myself so he wouldn't see my disappointment._

_"My parents forgot I had practice again. Can I walk home with you? We are_  
><em>neighbors after all."<em>

_Ichigo beamed. "Sure!" he said, before grabbing my hand and pulling me along the path. His mother stood waiting not far away, the same genuine, warm smile she bore the first day I met her and Ichigo peered down on us as we ran up to her._

_As we walked back to our homes, I felt a raincoat fall over my shoulders. Looking toward Ichigo, I realized his raincoat was missing and he had moved under the umbrella with his mother. As I watched his little hand slip into hers, I smiled sadly._

_'I wish I had a nice mom like that. Mine just cares that I don't cause any trouble and do all the chores...'I thought, staring off into space._

_I had grabbed Ichigo's free hand, then realized that we were running towards the river._

_"Ichigo, NO!" Mrs. Kurosaki and I shouted in unison.._

_The next few moments came in a blur. It wasn't until the feeling of shock wore from my young senses as my eyes trailed from the abandoned umbrella to the supine form in the grass that I knew what had happened:_

_The only woman that would ever come close to showing me what a true mother is was dead._

_She was gone and there was nothing I could do about it._

_It was as if she had just…stopped living. There was no one around; no one would happen upon the scene until nearly a half-hour later. No reason as to why she would have passed on. For a few moments, I chanted to myself, "No…no…she's not gone," trying, in vain, to turn the truth into a lie._

_In those few moments, I actually believed myself. But when I turned towards__ her, to wake her up, her pale, cold skin told me otherwise. Like Atlas, I felt__ the world come crashing down upon me, releasing a broken sob and curled up__ into my self, crawling over to Ichigo._

_His eyes were wide, mouth quivering in disbelief. There was no reason either of us had to believe that she had been murdered, or to feel that she was even dead. Looking at the peaceful expression on her face, it was as though she had just fainted. But something in us, something in the air-I don't quite know how to explain it. We just knew._

_And if I knew Ichigo, he would blame himself._

_He struggled a few minutes, trying to wake her up. Hoping, I guess, that the anguished look on my face only meant that there was something I had overlooked, that there was still something of her left there, face-down and long brown hair strewn over rain-slicked grass. He was nearly ballistic at one point. But the moment I put my arms around him, he broke. I felt him shuddering entirely._

_"It's gonna be okay, Ichigo," I said, my own sobs breaking through despite my efforts to hold them back._

_I don't know if I was trying to convince him, or myself._

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**So? How did you like it? I give a nice big THANK YOU to thepenandthesword for being my Beta, it's really useful.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello and welcome back! How did you like my next chapter? Just to let you know, if you want to whine about the lack of description of my character-Roozu- I'll be describing her throughout the story so as not to type a boring list. Besides, my beta, thepenandthesword, is too awesome at what she does to do that.**

**Disclaimer: I sadly, don't own Bleach. If I did, there would be much more randomness.  
><strong>  
><em>Chapter Two: The Soul Reaper<em>

I shot up out of bed, drenched in a cold sweat, even though I was wearing shorts and a tank top. My eyes filled with tears upon remembering my Dream. Shaking uncontrollably as I went to my bathroom, which was at the end of the hallway I was walking down now, I tried to wipe my tears, only to have more replace them.

Once I stepped foot in the bathroom, I immediately closed the door and rid myself of my pajamas. I normally didn't take showers in the morning, but with how sweaty I was, I needed one. A nice, warm shower always calmed me down, too. 

I turned up the water to a bit above lukewarm and stepped over the bathtub's wall and into the actual tub. I swiftly forced the soap into my short hair and quickly washed it, and then cleaned my face as I waited a bit before rinsing it out. I worked a small amount of conditioner into it, hoping that the images from my slumber would scrub out with the nasty feeling of the sweat.

They did not.

I finished cleaning myself and withdrew from the shower stall, drying my body with the towel I pulled off the hook on the bathroom door before plodding back to my room. My daze lifted a bit once I checked my clock.

7:30 the bold red letters flashed at me, substituting a mother's lecture.

At least the thought of being late set my mind to other thoughts, however temporary. I hurriedly pulled on my school uniform, looked at my brush for a few seconds before throwing it over my shoulder and hearing it glance off the bed (my hair always wound up a mop of dull copper fuzz unless I took the time to style it) as I headed out the bedroom door and down to the kitchen. 

My parents were sitting at the table, speaking to one another over breakfast and coffee. My homework was now crammed into my textbooks and dropped haphazardly into a chair. I groaned, annoyed I had forgotten to take it back up to my room the night before. I'd have to sort through it once I got to school; my mother always grabbed my papers, tucked them into a loose stack and shoved them in my books at random, mixing the geometry with the history. The memory of getting up in front of my Japanese class and reading aloud my biology report on cell division was not an embarrassment I wanted to repeat.

I pulled out my backpack from under the chair where one of my parents had kicked it and just raked my stuff over into it. My parents, not bothering to notice my presence, continued talking. For the heck of it, I reached over and snagged and apple from the table in front of them, then headed out the door without a word of parting exchanged between the three of us.

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"You got a death wish, Pal? Nobody hits my buddies for no reason and lives  
>to tell about it!"<p>

I walked around the corner and saw Ichigo stomping one some dude's back,  
>other people looking astonished and shouting things like 'We have to help<br>him!'.

I sighed and pushed my way through a small group of bystanders.

"Hey Ichigo, isn't it a little early for a fight?" I asked him casually to scare the men into thinking it was a common event-which it was, but they didn't know that. "What did this guy do?"

He wiped his mouth with his still clenched fist before nodding in the direction of an overturned vase at the base of a streetlamp. I saw the see-through dress of a little girl who had died last Wednesday. I heard the rustle of clothes and a groan; Ichigo had lifted one of the guys up by the back of his shirt and had forced him to look in the direction of both girl and vase.

"Listen up you pond scum!" he shouted in the man's ear. "Do you see that? Question one: What do you think that is?" Ichigo didn't give the guy time to answer before turning to the rest of the beaten man's gang. They looked as throttled as the guy on the ground did. "You! The one in the middle! Answer!"

'_Oh_, _boy,'_ I thought, one eye slightly wincing, _'he's really angry now.'_

"Me? I-I guess s-someone left some flowers for some kid who was killed here," the man answered shakily. That was certainly intriguing.

"She was killed?" I asked Ichigo, earning a nod in response. He kicked the guy's face, knocking him down and scaring the other no-namers (even if I knew their names, if someone had ticked off Ichigo that badly, they probably didn't deserve to be called by anything less than an insult, anyway).

"Question two!" Ichigo said, "Why is it lying on its side?"

"I guess one of us knocked it over when we were skating through here," the  
>guy on the left answered.<p>

Ichigo kicked them both onto the ground, growling, "You guys catch on fast!" I could practically see the demonic aura around him. "Now apologize, or next time the flowers will be for you!" He shouted, making the guys screamand dash off down the road, half-tripping over their own feet and slamming into bystanders as they ran.

Ichigo watched them leaving, his chest still heaving from venting. "I'm sorry about that, I'll bring you some new flowers tomorrow," he apologized.

Thank you for coming to my defense," the ghost girl said, "I think I might be able to rest  
>peacefully now," She looked about eleven, if that, and had dark green eyes, tan–pale<br>skin and dark brown hair. She would have been a real beauty if she had made it to adulthood.

Ichigo bent down and picked up the semi-squashed flowers, setting them up right. I took my water bottle out of my pack and squirted water into the vase. The little girl  
>smiled and thanked us.<p>

With a reply of "You're welcome," we walked away. I glanced back after we made it to the opposite corner of the block. She had already disappeared.

Ichigo and I headed towards his house. He didn't talk about the fight or the little ghost girl, and I didn't ask. It wasn't an isolated incident-Ichigo had been prone to ignore many of the restless spirits that he could see, but others' respect for the dead was something he could not. The youth and particular manner of death of this latest one, however…

Well, remembering how he lost his own mother so unfairly as a child, it wasn't surprising he reacted the way he had. When we passed the street in which I would normally turn to reach my house, he didn't blink-it was unofficial that if I didn't leave him there, I was spending the night with his family. Both of us knew that my parents didn't care whether I returned or not most of the time, as long as I kept out of trouble. Three weeks had gone by one time before they made an effort to look for me-and by that, I mean calling Ichigo's father. Then it was only because they were throwing some get-together with people from my father's office and he wanted the place to look inhabited by a close-knit, happy family.

It was dark by the time we walked through the door.

"I'm home!" announced Ichigo as he wandered down the hall. The moment the words left his mouth, his dad came out and kicked him, causing him to fly backwards and land on his back, his butt in the air and legs over his head. I looked out from the opening of the room where I had slipped before Ichigo had spoken. After years of staying over at Ichigo's, I could practically time the seconds between Ichigo's daily return greeting and his father's daily greeting attacks-it was down to about 3.7 seconds now if both were on the first floor at the time.

When I saw Ichigo all flipped over, my giggles turned to hysterical, rolling on the floor, pounding the ground with my fists. I'm sure Ichigo was glaring at me but I didn't care. His father's victorious speech just made my laughing much worse.

A full five minutes passed before I calmed down. I walked to the kitchen where the Kurosakis had disappeared into (more like slunk, in Ichigo's case). I took the bowl from the place Yuzu had sat for me, grinning over Ichigo and Mr. Kurosaki's glaring contest as I helped myself to some food.

"If they don't eat dinner, you and me both get more rice, Karin," I said bemusedly.

After finishing my dinner-pretty much five seconds later-I ran upstairs and threw myself onto Ichigo's bed, snickering as I wrapped the covers around me and grabbed his pillows. Soon, I heard Ichigo stomp up the stairs and into his room. A moment later, I crashed to the floor, bedding and all. I stood up, nearly tripping in the blanket cocoon, and glared at him.

"Hey!" I laughed, playfully whacking his head, which made a loud 'thump!'. He glared at me.

"Aren't you a little old for the whole 'steal my bed' thing?"

"As if," I grinned at him, shucking off his twisted bedding. "That game never gets old."

I dumped the wrinkled lot into his arms and piled the pillows on top, ignoring his protests for me to help him as I headed over to the drawer where I kept a couple of changes of clothes for the times I randomly sleep over. I left him muttering to himself while I went into the bathroom and got ready for bed.

When I came back to Ichigo's room, he was buried in a math book. My homework was already finished so I decided to grab my sleeping bag from the closet and roll it out. I swiped one of Ichigo's pillows when we wasn't looking, grinning to myself that I would probably lose it the moment Ichigo discovered my pilfering, and snuggled down under a blanket.

Moments later, the shadows of sleep consumed me.

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><strong>

"Good morning Ichigo, Roozu," Yuzu greeted us as we stumbled into the kitchen, still shaking off sleep.

"Hello Karin, Yuzu, Isshin-san," I greeted back tiredly, yawning and rubbing my right eye.

I ignored the T.V. and smeared peanut butter and apple jelly on some heavily buttered toast, smashed them together and held it between my teeth. "Come on Ichigo! Time for school!" I said, words muffled by the sandwich as I began pulling him by the hand toward the door, scooping my backpack up with my free hand.

It took about half a block before Ichigo managed to free himself from my grip. The morning walk went well enough: me choking down my sandwich while Ichigo complained of my dragging him, his chiding me over not doing my homework and me protesting that I, in fact, had. It was all so blissfully "normal".

Until I heard Ichigo call out. "Hello?"

I turned around, seeing him stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk, his face contorted into a look of both confusion and…

_Fear?_

I blinked owlishly. That wasn't an emotion you could associate with Ichigo much. I hadn't seen that look since…

I was about to ask what was wrong when a chill ran up my back. I heard the roar.

_"!"_

"I-Ichigo? D-did you hear that?" I said, looking around as a cold sweat prickled at my skin. It was coming from the direction of our school. The both of us walked toward it, our pace soon shifting from brisk steps to an all-out run. Upon hearing something along the lines of the explosion, we saw people falling, tripping over one another in their attempt to get away from the source of the noise.

I grabbed Ichigo's hand again to avoid being separated in the panicking crowd as we pushed our way through it towards the explosion.

"What in the hell is that?" both of us shouted. We reached the edge of the crowd, buckling over a moment from shoving our way through, only to see one more figure running toward us, escaping a cloud of dust and flying debris.

"Help me!"

The little ghost girl from the previous day bounded down the sidewalk toward us, her pigtails flying and a look of pure terror spread across her transparent face. I saw Ichigo start forward when up from the cloud of dust appeared a huge skeletal face attached to an equally monstrous form. My eyes widened in panic as I looked to Ichigo, who was-

"Hey!" I shouted as Ichigo nearly pulled my arm out of socket in attempts to drag me away from the monstrosity.

"What is that thing?" the little girl asked.

"I have no freaking clue," Ichigo shouted.

"Whatever the hell it is," I yelled, now taking the role from dragee to dragger, "I sure as hell am not sticking around to find out!"

The three of us-the little ghost girl in front, Ichigo and I soon passing her-bolted up the sidewalk, the crowd dispersed and many of them looking confusedly at the building that had just exploded. Why they weren't moving, I didn't know, but I saw Ichigo waving an arm and I started shouting at bystanders to "quit gawking and get a move on!"

I heard a small, "Ugh!" and turned just in time to see two black pigtails fly up and the little ghost girl crash onto the sidewalk. I stopped short, nearly tripping both Ichigo and myself as he continued to run. One of us-I'm not sure who was holding onto who by that time-let go and I ran back to the little girl.

"Come on! We've gotta move!" Ichigo exclaimed, both of us grabbing one of her arms to help her up. Just as she was struggling to her feet, the monster turned the corner, taking out several windows on the umpteenth floor and sending a spray of glass, steel, and indistinguishable debris raining down not far from us. It waved its ugly head around until it spotted us.

"RWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

It lunged.

Suddenly, a black blur darted in front of it, causing it to buck and screech with raging fury. A few seconds later and it sunk in that the blur was human., but not until it had rushed the monster's face and its boney face split in half. Within less than half a minute, the monster was gone, vanished as though it had never been, and before us, standing amidst the sea of broken glass and splintered foundation, stood a thin, black-garbed girl wielding a katana. Seconds later she, too, was gone.

I blinked, unsure that any of what I saw was real.

"Who was that?" Ichigo asked. His question went unanswered, with neither the ghost girl nor me having any clue as to the identity of our savior. As we three stood up, Ichigo and I on shaky legs, I caught a snippet of a nearby conversation. "The sidewalk's burnt. There must have been another explosion."

I narrowed my brow in confusion. "Didn't they see…?"

"I don't think they did," Ichigo said, finishing my unspoken thought. All around us, everyone seemed to think a second explosion had happened, pointing to the top of the building that had just sustained damage. No one mentioned anything about a monster. Ichigo was looking around wildly. I could think of nothing else to do. The ghost girl had disappeared-perhaps frightened of the possibility of another attack.

"Come on Ichigo. Let's go home," I said softly, tugging his hand as I turned and headed off down the street.

That evening, I stayed over at Ichigo's again. We didn't say much at the dinner table, pretending to be interested in Yuzu's curry rather than our monstrous encounter earlier that day, before we both headed up and went to sleep.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Later~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

"…What the hell are you doing here?"

I jolted awake at the sound of a yell-Ichigo's yell, I realized after a moment. Looking up, I realized the girl that had destroyed the monster was standing on the nightstand, her katana gripped tightly in her hand.

"Put that thing away! You're not slicing me up!" Ichigo exclaimed.

The girl merely jumped off the bed and onto the floor next to me. In one swift movement, I lifted my sleeping bag-wrapped legs and swept hers off-balance, sending her reeling backwards onto the floor.

"Who the hell are you?" I shouted, struggling to my feet as the girl scrambled away and out of the reach of another leg sweep.

"Yeah! If you're a burglar, you're not a very good one!" Ichigo joined in. "Besides, you shouldn't talk to yourself!"

I didn't hear her talk to herself... my mind trailed off. The girl stared at me, wide-eyed, whipping her gaze back and forth between Ichigo and myself.

"You kicked me! No ordinary human should even be able to see me! Are you telling me you can see me?"

"OF COURSE WE CAN SEE YOU!" we shouted in unison.

"You speak like you're not even a human yourself," I said incredulously, more of a sarcastic remark than a question. However, the girl took it is such.

"You really want to know? Well I'll tell you," The girl started, her dark blue eyes staring at me calmly, "I'm a soul reaper."

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**So? How do you like it? Please review, I need some people for my cookie  
>chart, even though it's been a too little time to start asking for reviews,<br>they're still a pleasantry to get. Thank you again for being my Beta for this  
>chapter, ThePenandtheSword!<strong>

**((and ThePenandtheSword, who edited this chapter, thanks SMILEH123 for her thanks and asks the readers to please respond to the author, as good comments are a writer's bread and butter-in a moral support sort of way))  
><strong>


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